Performance: Contemporary Photography from the Douglas Nielsen Collection

This exhibition gathers more than 100 works from the private collection of Douglas Nielsen, choreographer and professor at the University of Arizona School of Dance. Featuring photographs and photo-based prints by artists as diverse and provocative as Diane Arbus, John Baldessari, Jo Ann Callis, Nan Goldin, Bruce Nauman, Richard Renaldi, and Cindy Sherman, the exhibition’s unique installation draws out the dramatic and physical tension that can result between photographer and subject, the observer and the observed. Among the exhibition’s highlights are focused displays of images by Nancy Burson and Jimmy DeSana, as well as compelling works by lesser-known artists such as Todd Gray and Noah Kalina, all of which are presented in ways that are by turns whimsical, meditative, and revealing about a fundamental aspect of the art and nature of photography. 

About Douglas Nielsen

Douglas Nielsen, Professor, University of Arizona School of Dance, has been collecting photography since the 1970s, while simultaneously living an itinerate life-style as a performer, choreographer, and teacher of contemporary dance. He originally joined the UA Dance faculty in 1987, until the Berlin Wall fell, wherein he took a 15-year hiatus to teach contemporary dance in post-communist countries including Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Czech Republic, and Mongolia. A former member of the Batsheva Dance Company in Israel and the Gus Solomons, Pearl Lang, and Paul Sanasardo dance companies in New York, he established Douglas Nielsen Dances in 1981, and performed solo works by Viola Farber, Beverly Blossom, Anna Sokolow, Murray Louis, and Charles Weidman. Professor Nielsen has been granted four fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and a Performing arts fellowship with the Arizona Commission on the Arts.